Since Chechnya achieved de facto independence from Russia in late 1996, its stability has been slowly unraveling as an Islamist faction led by Shamil Baseyev and Ibn Khattab is undermining the Chechen government led by President Aslan Maskhadov (see 1997-Early 1999). On March 5, 1999, General Gennady Shpigun, the Russian Interior Ministry representative in Chechnya, is kidnapped by masked gunmen just as he is about to board a plane to fly to Moscow from Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The Russian government is outraged, especially since Maskhadov had guaranteed Shpigun’s safety. Sergei Stepashin, who is Russian interior minister at the time of the kidnapping, will later say that the Russian government begins planning a military assault on Chechnya shortly after. Stephashin wants Russia to conquer the flat northern half of Chechnya and then launch strikes into the mountainous southern half. However, Vladimir Putin, head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s intelligence agency, advocates invading all of Chechnya. By July, Stepashin has been promoted to Russian prime minister, and he says that in a Kremlin Security Council meeting that month: “we all came to the conclusion that there was a huge hole on our border which won’t be closed if we don’t [advance] to the Terek [a river dividing the flat northern part of Chechnya from the mountainous southern part]. It was a purely military decision.” Stepashin is dismissed as prime minister in early August and replaced by Putin (see August 9, 1999). Chechen raids into the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan in August (see August 7-8, 1999) and a series of mysterious bombings in Moscow in September (see September 13, 1999, September 9, 1999, and September 22-24, 1999) provide the excuses for Russia to attack Chechnya later in September (see September 29, 1999). But Stepashin will later say: “We were planning to reach the Terek River in August or September. So this was going to happen, even if there had been no explosions in Moscow. I was working actively on tightening borders with Chechnya, preparing for an active offensive.” [Washington Post, 3/10/2000]

Aleksandr Zhilin, a prominent military journalist and retired Air Force colonel, publishes an article entitled “Storm in Moscow” in the Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper. According to unnamed sources, Zhilin reports that a group of government figures in President Yelstin’s administration are plotting to destabilize Russian politics by committing spectacular acts of terrorism and other crimes. This alleged plan aims to discredit Mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov, a possible candidate in the up-coming presidential elections of 2000. “From trustworthy sources in the Kremlin the following has become known. The administration of the president has drafted and adopted (individual points have been reported to Yeltsin) a broad plan for discrediting Luzhkov with the aid of provocations, intended to destabilize the socio-psychological situation in Moscow. In circles close to Tatyana Dyachenko [Yeltsin’s younger daughter], the given plan is being referred to as ‘Storm in Moscow.’ […] As is confirmed by our sources, the city awaits great shocks. The conducting of loud terrorist acts (or attempts at terrorist acts) is being planned in relation to a number of government establishments: the buildings of the FSB [the Russian intelligence agency], MVD [the Ministry of Internal Affairs], Council of Federation, Moscow City Court, Moscow Arbitration Court, and a number of editorial boards of anti-Luzhkov publications. Also foreseen is the kidnapping of a number of well-known people and average citizens by ‘Chechen rebels’ who with great pomp will then be ‘freed’ and brought to Moscow by Mr. [Vladimir] Rushailo [the newly appointed head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs].” Actions employing the use of force “will be conducted against structures and businessmen supporting Luzhkov.” Also, “a separate program has been worked out directed at setting organized crime groups in Moscow against one another and provoking a war among them.” The purpose of these actions is to create “the conviction that Luzhkov had lost control over the situation in the city.” In a subsequent article in Novaya Gazeta (November 18, 1999), Zhilin will report that the plan “Storm in Moscow” was dated June 29 and that he had obtained a copy on July 2. The article will go unnoticed immediately after publication, but will be much-discussed two months later after the September apartment bombings (see September 9, 1999, September 13, 1999, and September 22-24, 1999). The BBC will report on September 30, “Zhilin’s article is interesting because it was written before the bomb explosions. At the very least it says a lot about the fevered political atmosphere in Russia that some people take these theories [of a government conspiracy] seriously.” [BBC, 9/30/1999; Dunlop, 10/17/2001; RFE/RL Newsline, 3/27/2002; National Review Online, 4/30/2002; Dunlop, 10/5/2004, pp. 11 ]

In March 13, 2000, the Russian independent weekly Novaya Gazeta publishes a bombshell that re-ignites the Ryazan incident controversy (see September 22-24, 1999). A soldier named Alexei Pinyaev describes how during the autumn of 1999 he was stationed near Ryazan, a city about 100 miles south of Moscow, and given guard duty at a military warehouse. He says it contained large sacks marked “sugar” but when he and another soldier surreptitiously opened one of the bags to sweeten their tea, the powder tasted vile. They showed the powder to their commander who then turned it over to a bomb expert. The expert identified it as hexogen. Immediately afterwards, several high-ranking FSB officers arrived from Moscow and accused the soldiers of divulging state secrets. To the soldiers’ relief, they were not sent to prison but simply told to forget the whole matter and they were later sent to Chechnya. The story causes an uproar, finally forcing the government to respond to the Ryazan controversy (see March 23, 2000). [Satter, 2003, pp. 30]

The Guryanov Street bombing. [Source: NTV/Terror.ru]A powerful explosion levels the central portion of a block-long Moscow apartment building shortly after midnight, killing 94 people. The building is located on Guryanov Street in a working-class suburb, far from the heart of Moscow. Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, who has a degree in chemistry, identifies the probable explosive as hexagen, also called RDX. He says the attack was probably carried out by Chechen terrorists: “Visual signs suggest that it was a terrorist act similar to the one carried out in Buinaksk” (see September 4, 1999). Interfax reports that an anonymous caller declared that the explosion is “our response to air strikes against peaceful villages in Chechnya and Dagestan.” [New York Times, 9/10/1999; Moscow Times, 9/10/1999; BBC, 8/10/2000] Another Moscow apartment building is bombed on September 13, killing over 100 (see September 13, 1999). Later in the month, explosives will be found in an apartment building in the nearby city of Ryazan. The Russian government will initially declare it a foiled bombing until the suspects arrested turn out to be FSB agents. The government will then claim it was merely a training exercise (see September 22-24, 1999). This will lead some to suspect that all three apartment bomb incidents this month were false flag attacks by the FSB (see March 6, 2002, December 30, 2003 and January 2004).

The Kashirskoye Street bombing. [Source: AP/Terror99.ru]A powerful early-morning blast levels an apartment building on Kashirskoye Street, Moscow, killing 118 people. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov blame Chechen terrorists. [New York Times, 9/13/1999; BBC, 9/13/1999] Another Moscow apartment building was bombed on September 9, killing nearly 100 (see September 9, 1999). Later in the month, explosives will be found in an apartment building in the nearby city of Ryazan. The Russian government will initially declare it a foiled bombing until the suspects arrested turn out to be FSB agents. The government will then claim it was merely a training exercise (see September 22-24, 1999). This will lead some to suspect that all three apartment bomb incidents this month were false flag attacks by the FSB (see March 6, 2002, December 30, 2003 and January 2004).

Ryazan bomb detonator. [Source: Cryptome.org]On the evening of September 22, 1999, several residents of an apartment block in Ryazan, a city about a hundred miles south of Moscow, observe three strangers at the entrance of their building. The two young men and a woman are carrying large sacks into the basement. The residents notice that the car’s plate has been partially covered with paper, although they can still see a Moscow license plate number underneath. They decide to call the local police. After several bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow earlier in the month (see September 9, 1999 and September 13, 1999), their vigilance is understandable. When the police arrive, around 9:00 p.m., they uncover what appears to be huge bomb: three sacks of sugar filled with a granular powder, connected to a detonator and a timing device set for 5:30 a.m. The bomb squad uses a gas testing device to confirm that it is explosive material: it appears to be hexagen, the military explosive that is believed to have been used to blow up two Moscow blocks. The residents are evacuated. Then the bomb carted away and turned over to the FSB. (In an apparent oversight, the FSB fails to collect the detonator, which is photographed by the local police.) The following morning, September 23, the government announces that a terrorist attack has been averted. They praise the vigilance of the local people and the Ryazan police. Police comb the city and find the suspects’ car. A telephone operator for long-distance calls reports that she overheard a suspicious conversation: the caller said there were too many police to leave town undetected and was told, “Split up and each of you make your own way out.” To the police’s astonishment, the number called belongs to the FSB. Later this day, the massive manhunt succeeds: the suspects are arrested. But the police are again stunned when the suspects present FSB credentials. On Moscow’s orders, they are quietly released. On September 24, the government reverses itself and now says the bomb was a dummy and the whole operation an exercise to test local vigilance. The official announcement is met with disbelief and anger. Ryazan residents, thousands of whom have had to spend the previous night outdoors, are outraged; local authorities protest that they were not informed. However, the suspicion of a government provocation is not widely expressed and press coverage fades after a few days. It is only several months later that an investigation by the independent weekly Novaya Gazeta re-ignites the controversy (see February 20, 2000 and Fall 1999). The government’s explanations will fail to convince skeptics (see March 23, 2000). The Ryazan incident later becomes the main reason for suspecting the government of having orchestrated previous bombings. The controversy is then widely reported in the international press. [BBC, 9/24/1999; Moscow Times, 9/24/1999; CNN, 9/24/1999; Baltimore Sun, 1/14/2000; Los Angeles Times, 1/15/2000; Moscow Times, 1/18/2000; Independent, 1/27/2000; Observer, 3/12/2000; Newsweek, 4/3/2000; Insight, 4/17/2000; National Review Online, 4/30/2002; Le Monde (Paris), 11/17/2002; Satter, 2003; Moscow Times, 9/24/2004]

Yuri Tkachenko [Source: Terror99.ru]In its February 14-20, 2000, issue, the Russian newsweekly Novaya Gazeta reports that Ryazan police officers insist that the bomb they uncovered and defused was real. On September 22, 1999, a bomb was discovered in the city of Ryazan, about 100 miles south of Moscow. After the chief bomb suspects were discovered to be FSB agents, the government claimed the bomb was a dummy and the incident was a training exercise (see September 22-24, 1999). But the bomb-squad officer, Yuri Tkachenko, is adamant that it was a professionally-prepared, military-style bomb. He defends the accuracy of his sophisticated gas-testing device which identified the explosives as hexogen. The article provokes much comment in Russia but is ignored by the government. [Satter, 2003, pp. 29]

Alexander Zdanovich. [Source: Terror99.ru]A team of FSB officials, led by Alexander Zdanovich, agrees to a televised meeting with angry and suspicious residents of Ryazan, hoping to put down rumors of a government provocation and shore up the credibility of the official account. In September 1999 a bomb was found in the basement of a building in Ryazan and the people arrested for planting the bomb were discovered to be FSB agents. The government then claimed the incident was merely a training exercise, but residents suspect the FSB wanted to bomb the building to create a fake terrorist incident (see September 22-24, 1999). Zdavonich apologizes for the inconvenience suffered by Ryazan inhabitants but then suggests the renewed interest in the event is a campaign ploy: “For months, there was no interest and there were no publications. The theme was activated on the eve of the presidential election with the most fantastic details in order to accuse the FSB of planning a real explosion with the death of people. This is actively used in the political struggle.” (The presidential election is only one week away.) A soldier named Alexei Pinyaev has claimed that he worked at a nearby base where hexogen was reportedly kept in sacks marked “sugar” (see Fall 1999). The commander of the base denies that there was any soldier named Pinyaev, but the Novaya Gazeta reporter who had found Pinyaev then shows pictures of him and plays a recording of his interview. The FSB will not let its three agents appear in public or allow journalists to interview them. The broadcast does not allow any discussion of a possible connection between the Ryazan incident and the apartment bombings in Moscow earlier that month (see September 9, 1999 and September 13, 1999). The FSB officials did not have good explanations for the fact that local authorities, including its own FSB office in Ryazan, were not informed of the supposed exercise, or for the lack of medical resources for the thousands of people forced to spend the night outdoors. According to David Satter, a long-time correspondent in Moscow for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times who believes the Ryazan incident was a failed provocation, the broadcast only serves to increase the public’s misgivings. [Satter, 2003, pp. 30, 261-264]

Boris Berezovsky. [Source: BBC]At a well-publicized press conference in London, where he now lives in self-imposed exile, Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky accuses President Putin of involvement in an alleged FSB plot behing the 1999 apartment bombings (see September 22-24, 1999, September 9, 1999 and September 13, 1999). After an overview of many well-known facts about the bombings and the controversial Ryazan security exercise, as well as a documentary called “The Assassination of Russia”, Berezovsky introduces the testimony of Nikita Chekulin. According to Chekulin, an explosive expert who says he was recruited by the FSB, large quantities of hexogen were purchased through his research institute, the Russian Conversion Explosives Center (Rosconversvzryvtsenter), and shipped under false labels in 1999-2000 out of military bases to cover organizations linked to the FSB. Chekulin says the FSB suppressed a governmental investigation into the scheme. “I am sure the bombings were organized by the FSB,” Berezovsky declares. “The FSB thought that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin would not be able to come to power through lawful democratic means.” [BBC, 3/6/2002; Guardian, 3/6/2002; Washington Post, 3/6/2002; Kommersant (Moscow), 3/6/2002; Monitor (Jamestown Foundation), 3/6/2002; SBS, 5/21/2003]

A poll shows that suspicions of secret services involvement in the 1999 apartment bombings (see September 9, 1999 and September 13, 1999) are widespread in Russia. Following Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky’s allegations made in in recent weeks (see March 6, 2002), six percent of Russians questioned in the poll say they believe the Russian FSB was behind the apartment bombings and another 37 percent believe it is a possibility. Most respondents say they would like Russian television to show a Berezovsky-sponsored documentary on the subject. [Agence France-Presse, 4/17/2002]

A truckload of about four thousand copies of the book “The FSB Blows Up Moscow” is seized by the FSB in order to protect “state secrets”. The book, by authors Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky, claims the FSB orchestrated the 1999 apartment bombings (see September 22-24, 1999, September 9, 1999 and September 13, 1999). The bookseller calls it a “shock attack on freedom of the press in Russia” and suggests that “the fact that they opened the case under this part of the Criminal Code [on state secrets] is an indirect admission that they participated in the explosions.” [Agence France-Presse, 12/30/2003; Moscow Times, 1/30/2004]

Irina Khakamada. [Source: Associated Press]Irina Khakamada, a leading liberal, pro-Western candidate for the Russian presidency, accuses Putin’s government of possible involvement in terrorist attacks blamed on Chechen rebels. The Los Angeles Times reports, “The implication of Khakamada’s accusations was that in both the 2002 theater crisis and the 1999 apartment bombings, authorities backing Putin may have wanted to see Russian citizens die and Chechen fighters painted as terrorists to boost support for military action in Chechnya and enhance the get-tough leader’s popularity.” Khakamada, a member of the anti-Putin Union of Right Forces party, says “there are a lot of suspicious things” about the 1999 apartment bombings and calls for an independent investigation. “This is a feature of real democracy, especially when it comes to investigations connected with actions of officials and special services,” she says. (She will earn 3.9 percent of the vote.) [Los Angeles Times, 1/19/2004; Guardian, 3/11/2006]

A 1996 photograph of one of the Al Qaqaa storage bunkers. [Source: New York Times]The US media learns that Iraq’s interim government reports that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives, used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads, and detonate nuclear weapons, are missing from a former military installation (see October 10, 2004). The facility, Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under US control but in reality is “a no-man’s land,” in the words of the New York Times, “picked over by looters as recently as” October 24. UN inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had monitored the huge cache of explosives for years. The IAEA says that machine tools usable for either nuclear or non-nuclear purposes are also missing. White House and Pentagon inspectors admit that the explosives disappeared some time after the US-led invasion of Iraq. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was informed of the missing explosives within the last month; according to the Times, “[i]t is unclear whether President Bush was informed.” US officials began answering questions about the missing explosives after reporters from the Times and CBS’s “60 Minutes” began asking questions. The CIA’s Iraq Survey Group has been asked to investigate the disappearance. Similar Explosives Used in Other Terrorist Attacks - The immediate concern, according to US officials, is the explosives’ possible use in major bombing attacks against American and/or Iraqi forces. The explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, can be used in bombs strong enough to destroy airplanes or large buildings. The Times notes that the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland (see After December 21, 1988) used less than a pound of such explosive. Larger amounts of the same kinds of explosives were used in the November 2003 Riyadh bombings (see May 12, 2003) and a September 1999 bombing of a Moscow apartment complex (see September 9, 1999 and September 13, 1999). The explosives can also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, the primary reason why it had been, until the invasion, monitored by UN inspectors from the IAEA. Repeated IAEA Warnings - The IAEA had publicly warned about the danger of the Al Qaqaa explosives before the invasion, and after the overthrow of the Iraqi government, IAEA officials specifically told US officials that they needed to keep the facility locked down (see May 2003). Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita says that the missing explosives need to be kept in perspective, as US and allied forces “have discovered and destroyed perhaps thousands of tons of ordnance of all types.” Iraq’s Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Rashad Omar, tells Times and CBS reporters: “Yes, they [the 380 tons of explosives] are missing. We don’t know what happened.” Omar says that after the invasion, Al Qaqaa was the responsibility of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which served as Iraq’s de facto government until June 2004 (see June 28, 2004). “After the collapse of the regime, our liberation, everything was under the coalition forces, under their control,” he says. “So probably they can answer this question, what happened to the materials.” The CPA is defunct; Bush administration officials say they don’t know where the explosives could be. One senior official says that the Qaqaa complex was listed as a “medium priority” site on the CIA’s list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. “Should we have gone there? Definitely,” says one senior official. Another senior official says that US soldiers gave the Qaqaa facility a cursory inspection during the push towards Baghdad in early April, but “saw no bunkers bearing the IAEA seal.” Refusal to Allow IAEA Inspections after Occupation - Satellite photos taken in late 2003 showed that two of the ten bunkers containing HMX had exploded, presumably from bombing during the US offensive, but eight remained relatively intact. The Bush administration refused to let the IAEA back into Iraq to inspect and verify the Qaqaa facility or any of the other stockpiles formerly monitored by IAEA officials. By May 2004, the IAEA was warning CPA officials that the facility had probably been looted (see May 2004). More Unguarded Stockpiles - Iraq is dotted with unguarded stockpiles of explosives, say US military and administration officials. One senior administration official notes, “The only reason this stockpile was under seal is because it was located at Al Qaqaa,” where nuclear work had gone on years ago. [New York Times, 10/25/2004]

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